Ew… no! Blood! Unngh!

The last time we checked in on a Wolverine movie was in 2013’s The Wolverine, a small, self-contained little story where Wolverine travelled to Japan and was charged with the care of the rich heiress and granddaughter of a soldier whose life he saved in World War II that quickly and drastically grew less small and less self-contained when that same soldier wound up betraying Wolverine in a bid to steal his youth-imbuing healing factor. I know that’s a bit more than a spoiler (and a really long and convoluted sentence), but, frankly, eff that movie and its weird Viper-snake-ladies, its ridiculous Silver Samurais, and its jump-right-off-the-rails-of-sanity third act after its much more even-toned first two [acts]. Besides The Wolverine’s bullet train sequence, there is almost no reason to see that movie, at least not in its entirety. Continue reading →

And then you die

Manchester by the Sea images courtesy of Roadside Attractions and Amazon Studios

“Life isn’t fair.” Odds are you’re going to hear that on at least a few occasions in your time on Earth, and if your life goes a certain way or if you too often find yourself in the company of a particular sort of person, it’s a saying that could echo and repeat and may even start to form a pattern around your entire existence. Really, the only people who like to say “life isn’t fair” are those who don’t care, especially not about your sh*t. Another saying that’s become nearly as popular is “It gets better”, and there’s a certain type of person you’re likely to hear that from too — someone who does care but who doesn’t have as firm a grasp on things as they’d like you to believe. And, if we’re being honest, they probably don’t care that much about your sh*t either. If they did, they’d realize how ignorant, manipulative, and galling saying “it gets better” can be. Continue reading →

And as I watched the lonely man ride the farting corpse of Harry Potter like a jet ski through the ocean waves, I realized I may never again have occasion to write a finer sentence.

Normally around this time of year we take a look at the smaller, less well-attended movies of the summer just passed, which is why you’ve been reading reviews of The Nice Guys and Green Room and like that, but FYI, we also had a skip week in September (as we are wont to do) because nobody here had enough to say about our third scheduled movie, Sing Street, to write a whole review about it. I point this out for two reasons. One, we hope it’s interesting to get a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at GOO Reviews (i.e., we do think ahead of time about what we’re doing), and two (and more importantly), you need to know that we watched Sing Street because the movies we ended up watching for this year’s “Summer Movies You Missed” review series wound up being weirdly distorted mirror versions of each other. In weeks two and three, we watched Green Room and then Sing Street, both movies about music’s role in growing up, but while the former was nihilistic and horrific, the latter was overtly, naively hopeful and upbeat. Now in weeks four and five, we watched Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Swiss Army Man, both movies about coming of age while trapped in the wilderness, but where the former was a lovely portrait about finding the best in each other, Swiss Army Man… well it’s about a lonely weirdo and the farting corpse he finds in the woods. Continue reading →

Excuse me, I must have something in my eye

A lot of our greatest fears (y’know, other than “shark!” or “sock puppets!”) centre on being alone. Really, really alone, without a genuine connection to anyone, that feeling of being set aside, cast adrift, that we don’t matter and that no one cares. It’s only natural that at some point in our lives we’ll find ourselves overcome with feelings of isolation, whether it’s out of a natural anxiety, a sense that we’re different, or simply because we don’t know anyone yet. That’s something most of us overcome at least to some extent, but for those few of us who are truly alone — with no close friends, family, or even acquaintances — the real horror of that loneliness is that, more often than not, we did it to ourselves. It tends to be that it’s not that hard to make friends, it’s just tough to meet new people, but what’s easier than either of those is to simply stay quiet and fade into the background, in the vague hope that someone, someday will finally tell us, “there’s nothing wrong with you,” and really mean it.

To varying degrees, we’re all creatures of emotion. When I was younger I believed I had more right than anyone else to have emotions, and, more specifically, to channel those emotions in whatever way I saw fit. After all, what did the other kids in my class know about loss? What did they know about feeling unloved or unwanted?

In my young and narrow mind, I believed they knew nothing. And as other children do, I even went so far as to believe that I was the only one in the world, that no one else had feelings, that only I could experience the world as I did. I lacked empathy, or the basic understanding of others’ emotions and the will to feel the same way.

Empathy, as with most things, came as I grew older and as I learned that others did, in fact, have the same association with loss and rejection as I did. So did the ability to understand my emotions and the reasons behind them. It was no longer enough just to feel sad or angry: I had to know why I felt the way I did, which led to understanding, which led to (hopefully) not taking those emotions out on others.

But when I was a child, with emotions so much fuller and so much more untameable, this maturity was beyond my grasp. All I knew was that I felt angry, or fearful, or happy, and I didn’t know how to keep my emotions inside where adults told me they belonged. So instead of keeping it all bottled up, I let the inside out.

her is one of those movies most people will go into very consciously. You won’t just be giving it a try on a “larf”, you won’t be buying your ticket, sight unseen, and you won’t be settling down into your seat not knowing what to expect. If you see it, you’ll be seeing it very deliberately. You’ll know exactly what you’re getting into. You’ll know you’ll be seeing a quirky, Oscar-nominated film and you’ll know there’ll be at least a degree of self-questioning. Perhaps the only thing you won’t know is how it could possibly end in anything other than complete and utter heartache that will leave you shattered… gutted. And in some ways, you’ll know that that’s the main reason you’re going to see it in the first place.

It’sa funny little movie. It explores the extraordinary questions of our collective, modern zeitgeist — the nature of existence, the nature of reality, the progress of technology, programming, memory and the singularity — but only on the surface. The deep thoughts that question existence itself are mere table stakes, the empty, insubstantial detritus of a film that’s aiming far higher.